WordPress 6.3 “Lionel”
Say hello to WordPress 6.3 “Lionel,” named after Lionel Hampton, the celebrated American jazz artist. A prolific jazz vibraphonist, pianist, and percussionist, Hampton gained notoriety working in harmony with greats from Charles Mingus to Quincy Jones and as bandleader of the eponymous Lionel Hampton Orchestra. His artistry and charitable work have been recognized with a Grammy, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the National Medal of Arts.
Be sure to turn up the volume of the musical stylings of Lionel Hampton as you discover all “Lionel” has to offer.
With “Lionel” you can create beautiful and compelling websites more efficiently than ever. Whether you want to build an entire site without coding or are a developer looking to customize every detail, WordPress 6.3 has something to pique your interest. As you unpack and explore this latest release, you will discover updated functions and navigation designed to help you work and create with less effort, design tools that give you more control over layout, and added functionality enriching the site-building experience.
“Lionel” marks a major chapter in the evolution of WordPress as a tool for expression. It’s the culmination of years of work from hundreds of contributors, bringing a more powerful and cohesive editing experience for crafting websites with blocks. It continues the quest of making web publishing approachable for everyone—so it’s also just a new beginning!
Matías Ventura, WordPress 6.3 Release Lead
What’s inside
This momentous release opens new possibilities for the creative expression of designers, creators, and builders. Powerful tools and refined controls give users confidence and allow them to easily manage their sites.
Do everything in the Site Editor
WordPress 6.3 brings your content, templates, and patterns together in the Site Editor for the first time. Add pages, browse style variations, create synced patterns, and enjoy fine-tuned control over navigation menus. Spend less time switching across different site areas—so you can focus on what matters most. Creation to completion, all in one place.
Preview Block themes
Experience block themes before you switch and preview the Site Editor, with options to customize directly before committing to a new theme.
Create and sync patterns
Arrange blocks and save them to the ‘My Patterns’ section for use throughout your site. You can even specify whether to sync your patterns (previously referred to as “Reusable blocks”) so that one change applies to all parts of your site. Or, utilize patterns as a starting point with the ability to customize each instance.
Work faster with the Command Palette
Switch to a specific template or open your editor preferences with a new tool that helps you quickly access expanded functionality. With simple keyboard shortcuts (?+k on Mac or Ctrl+k on Windows), clicking the sidebar search icon in Site View, or clicking the Title Bar, get where you need to go and do what you need to do in seconds.
Sharpen your designs with new tools
New design controls bring more versatility for fine-tuning, starting with the ability to customize your captions from the Styles interface without coding. You can manage your duotone filters in Styles for supported blocks and pick from the options provided by your theme or disable them entirely. The Cover block gets added settings for text color, layout controls, and border options, making this powerful block even more handy.
Track design changes with Style revisions
With a new audit trail, you can now see how your site looked at a specific time. Visualize these revisions in a timeline and access a one-click option to restore prior styles.
Annotate with the Footnotes block
Footnotes add convenient annotations throughout your content. Now you can add and link footnotes for any paragraph.
Show or hide content with the Details block
Use the Details block to avoid spoiling a surprise, create an interactive Q&A section, or hide a long paragraph under a heading.
Performance gets a boost
WordPress 6.3 has 170+ performance updates, including defer and async support for the Scripts API and fetchpriority support for images. These improvements, along with block template resolution, image lazy-loading, and the emoji loader, can dramatically improve your website’s perceived load time.
Accessibility remains a core focus
Incorporating more than 50 accessibility improvements across the platform, WordPress 6.3 is more accessible than ever. Improved labeling, optimized tab and arrow-key navigation, revised heading hierarchy, and new controls in the admin image editor allow those using assistive technologies to navigate more easily.
Other highlights
Set aspect ratio on images
Specify your aspect ratios and ensure design integrity, especially when using images in patterns.
Build your site distraction-free
Distraction-free designing is now available in the Site Editor.
Rediscover the Top Toolbar
A revamped Top Toolbar offers parent selectors for nested blocks, options when selecting multiple blocks, and an interface embedded into the title bar with new functionality in mind.
List View improvements
Drag and drop to every content layer and delete any block you would like in the updated List View.
Build templates with Patterns
Create unique patterns to jumpstart template creation with a new modal enabling access to pattern selection.
Changes in PHP support
Support for PHP 5 is discontinued. The new minimum supported version of PHP is 7.0.0.
Failed update safeguards
WordPress will now auto-restore the previously installed version of plugins or themes if something goes wrong during a failed manual update.
Learn more about WordPress and 6.3
Explore Learn WordPress for quick how-to videos, online workshops, and other resources to level up your knowledge of the latest features in WordPress.
Check out the WordPress 6.3 Field Guide for detailed developer notes to help you build with WordPress and get the most out of the latest release. Read the 6.3 release notes for additional technical details about this release, including feature recaps, installation information, file changes, fixes, and updates.
Read and subscribe to the Developer Blog for even more helpful WordPress content.
WordPress is a global software platform
61 locales have translated 90 percent or more of WordPress 6.3 into their language. Community translators are working hard to ensure more translations are on their way. Thank you, gracias, ?????, ???????, and ????????? to everyone who helps to make WordPress available in 200 languages.
Contributing to WordPress
WordPress believes in democratizing publishing and the freedoms that come with open source. Supporting this idea is a large community of people collaborating to strengthen the software. A big thank you to everyone who makes WordPress.
Our community of contributors has always been what makes WordPress wonderful. You are what makes sure our project continues to thrive, and our software remains secure, usable, and impactful. Thank you so much for joining together to make the web (and the world) a better place!
Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director, WordPress.org
WordPress 6.3 arrives thanks to more than 650 contributors’ collective passion and effort in at least 52 countries. This release also includes over 205 first-time contributors!
The 6.3 release squad
The 6.3 release was led from start to launch by an active set of contributors from across many disciplines. Over several weeks, they kept the release on track and moving forward by connecting ideas, resolving issues, and removing roadblocks.
- Release Lead: Matías Ventura
- Release Coordinators: Francesca Marano, Héctor Prieto
- Core Tech Leads: Andrew Ozz, Mike Schroder, David Baumwald
- Editor Tech Leads: Isabel Brison, Ramon Dodd
- Core Triage Leads: Jb Audras, Ahmed Kabir Chaion, Mukesh Panchal, Olga Glecker
- Editor Triage Leads: Anne McCarthy, Birgit Pauli-Haack, Firoz Sabaliya, Nick Diego
- Documentation Leads: Femy Praseeth, Steven Lin, Leonardus Nugraha, Mushrit Shabnam
- Marketing & Communications Leads: Dan Soschin, Jonathan Pantani, Meher Bala
- Test Leads: Brian Alexander, Pooja Derashri, Chris Malone, Piotrek Boniu
- Design Leads: Tammie Lister, Rich Tabor
- Performance Leads: Felix Arntz, Emily Clarke
6.3 contributors
Complimenting the release squad is a diverse group of contributors whose global collaboration delivered hundreds of enhancements and fixes, ensuring a stable release for all—a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.
Özgür KARALAR · 6adminit · Aaron Jorbin · Aaron Robertshaw · Abha Thakor · abhi3315 · Abhishek Sharma · Abir · abitofmind · Adam Silverstein · Adam W. Warner · Adarsh Akshat · Adel Tahri · Aditya Jain · Ahmed Chaion · Ahsan Chowdhury · Aki Hamano · akmelias · Akramul Hasan · Alex Concha · Alex Dimitrov · Alex Kozack · Alex Lende · Alex Stine · Alexandre Lara · allancole · Alvaro Gómez · Alvi Tazwar · Amaan Khan · amansurov · amin · Amy Hendrix (sabreuse) · Anatoliy · Anatoliy Dovgun · Andrea Fercia · Andrei Draganescu · Andrew Nacin · Andrew Ozz · Andrew Serong · Andrey "Rarst" Savchenko · André Maneiro · Andy · Andy Fragen · Andy Peatling · Anil Vaza · Ankit K Gupta · Ankit Panchal · Ankur Chotai · Anna · Anne McCarthy · Anne-Mieke Bovelett · annziel · Anthony Burchell · Anton Timmermans · Anton Vlasenko · Antony Agrios · anver · Anveshika Srivastava · Arafat Jamil · Ari Stathopoulos · Artemio Morales · Arthur Chu · Arunas Liuiza · Asad Polash · Ashar Irfan · Ashikur Rahman · Atanas Antonov · Aurooba Ahmed · Austin Matzko · Ayesh Karunaratne · azizantoun · Aznadesign · bangank36 · bartkalisz · Ben Dunkle · Ben Dwyer · Benjamin Grolleau · benjibee · benlk · Bernie Reiter · Bhavik Kalpesh · Bhrugesh Bavishi · Bijay Yadav · Birgit Pauli-Haack · bitnissen · bonger · Boone Gorges · Boro Sitnikovski · Brandon DuRette · Brandon Kraft · Brandon Payton · brasofilo · Brennan Goewert · Brian Alexander · Brian Coords · Brian Fischer · Brian Gardner · Bridget Willard · Bronson Quick · Brooke Kaminski · Brooke. · caraffande · Carlos Bravo · Carlos Garcia · Carolina Nymark · Cathi Bosco · ceer · Chad Chadbourne · Chintan hingrajiya · Chirag Rathod · Chloe Bringmann · Chouby · Chris Flannagan · Chris Lubkert · Chris Malone · chriscct7 · Christoph Daum · ckoerner · Code Amp · Colin Stewart · corentingautier · Courtney Robertson · Crixu · crs1138 · crstauf · cshark · Daisy Olsen · Dan Bernardic · Dan Soschin · Daniel Bachhuber · Daniel Richards · Daniele Scasciafratte · danyk4 · darerodz · Darshit Rajyaguru · Dave Whitley · David Baumwald · David Bi?ovec · David Calhoun · David Herrera · David Smith · davidmusnik · davidwebca · Dean Sas · Deepak Vijayan · Delete My Account · Denis de Bernardy · Denis Žoljom · Dennis Snell · Dennys Dionigi · densityapps · Derek Ashauer · Derek Blank · devshagor · Dharmesh Patel · Dhrumil Kumbhani · Dhruvi Shah · DigTek · Dilip Bheda · dimijazz · Dion Hulse · doems · Dominik Schilling · Drew Jaynes · dsar · dustyreagan · ebai4 · ecorica · Ed Beck · eduwass · Edward · Edwin Takahashi · ehsanakhgari · Ehtisham S. · Ella van Durpe · Emily Clarke · emirpprime · Enrique Sánchez · eric.7186 · Erik Betshammar · Ernest Behinov · Estela Rueda · Fabian Kägy · Fabian Todt · Faisal Ahammad · Falguni Desai · Farhan Ahmed · Felipe Elia · Felix Arntz · Femy Praseeth · Firoz Sabaliya · Florian TIAR · Francesca Marano · Frank Klein · franrosa · gaeldenysiak · Gal Baras · Gan (a11n) · Garth Mortensen · Gary Cao · Gary Jones · Gary Pendergast · Gennady Kovshenin · George · George Mamadashvili · Gerardo Pacheco · gilles66 · Gio Lodi · Glen Davies · GrandSlambert · Grant M. 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Get involved today
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Looking toward the future
20 years ago this past May, WordPress shipped the very first version, 0.7. What started with a blog post from co-founder Matt Mullenweg and a subsequent comment by co-founder Mike Little eventually evolved into the world’s most popular web publishing platform.
WordPress software continues to evolve and iterate based on the needs and desires of its robust and diverse user community. This release is the capstone of Phase 2 along the WordPress development roadmap. As the community looks to the future, all efforts turn to 6.4 and, subsequently, the transition into Phase 3, which is expected to introduce powerful collaboration tools to the website creation and management experience.
6.3 Haiku
A capstone release
Ships tools for building great sites
Collaboration